Reserving Disk Space you Purchased from the Oversold VPS providers

[DearLeaderJohn]

Hmm,

I'd like to think of the whole concept as being similar to an all-you-can-eat buffet. The restaurant owner expects that not everyone will sit there for hours on end cramming their mouths until they physically can't walk so essentially he/she oversells. 

However you will occasionally find people who do sit there for hours eating ridiculous amounts whilst drinking tap water; and I'd compare these people to the people on here reserving their diskspace. Sure, you're allowed to do it; but really, do you need to do it? What people don't seem to be grasping is that businesses are out to make profit. By hoarding, you're going to cause a mixture of scenarios such as

a) Increase of prices to keep up with demand = less customers = business losing money

b) Reduction of what other customers can have who are genuinely out to use what they need as opposed to hoarding.

Let's compare this to my buffet analogy; by hoarding your food you're going to then directly cause an increase in requirements for ingredients (thus increasing prices); however once people like you leave the restaurant there's a surplus in food, creating a waste. Essentially the same can be applied to a VPS host, if they have to buy more and more disks purely to satisfy a few hoarder customers who end up leaving down the line they end up with a waste. They have spent money on hardware that will not be utilized. Someone mentioned how this also links to the the environment etc.

So to sum it all up, don't be a hoarder. Leave some cheap spring rolls for the rest of us 

 

[drmike]

'd like to think of the whole concept as being similar to an all-you-can-eat buffet. The restaurant owner expects that not everyone will sit there for hours on end cramming their mouths until they physically can't walk so essentially he/she oversells. 

 

I like the buffet example and comparison.

There is a non relative part though in that every Chinese buffet I've ever been to:

1. Was using massively cheap ingredients

2. Was exploiting non citizen slave-like labor

3. Never is/was an all you can eat.

To that point, I have some very large friends who are capable of consuming a gross amount of food in one sitting.  I know one has been booted from all you can eat setups multiple times.  So calling them all you can eat, no way, they aren't, nor are they spreading around the underconsumption love to other customers.

VPSes aren't all you can eat.  They limit everything in the sales offer.  Then in the setup of the VPS every resource is locked down.

VPSes aren't using cheap ingredients - typically.  That would be an old gen processor with no RAID.  Most providers use modern gear with large RAM and they pay a healthy chunk to their provider every month.

VPSes often are exploiting cheap slave-like labor.  Many VPS companies have few, if any employees.  Mainly they do the work themselves and when they don't outsource it to pay-per-ticket companies.   Many seem happy to exploit foreign labor and the poor.

It still remains an interesting comparison though

If you went to said buffets and were told it is a three plate limit for fixed price, what would happen?  You'd see people with plates stacked sky high making the most of their allotted food limit.  People might actually end up wasting gross amounts of food ruined by stacking.  Some customers would go to the other place, that doesn't limit you to three plates.

All that said, a Chinese buffet has MUCH higher costs than a VPS business.  Even those graphically skirting laws and regulations still have to comply with the daily reality of buying and cooking hundreds of pounds of food that costs $ and they have to pay their landlord monthly.  VPS business has nearly fixed costs.  Sell x accounts to cover the server rental overhead.  Sell y more equals almost entirely profit.   No landlord, no pesky regulations, nothing.

 

[maounique]

As a customer, I don't care if host oversell or not.  It's none of my business.  I should not care about that.

I have a few issues with that.

First, you know the host oversells to keep prices low. You are part of the bargain.

If you use a KVM, that is oversold too, probably only traffic but many oversell other aspects.

It is not auditing motivations here, it is not even about morality, tho I would like to think that we all try to live modestly and not waste anything on purpose when others go hungry every night, but it is business.

Every business weights the averages of given conditions. Cannot guess the price of said ingredient in a given month, so makes an average of it for the business plan. If is wrong, goes out of business, but if a competitor buys all the ingredient at a loss just to make the prices go up and the competitors fail, then that is forbidden anti-concurential tactic.

If we agreed on a price and your sole interest is to make me go at a loss for selling you, I have the right to deny further service to you.

Simple as that.

 

[nunim]

I have a few issues with that... First, you know the host oversells to keep prices low .. If we agreed on a price and your sole interest is to make me go at a loss for selling you, I have the right to deny further service to you.

Simple as that.

First, I don't KNOW you oversell unless you tell me?  Many providers claim not to oversell at all.

Second, If I was to use the full resources that I have purchased legitimately (website, whatever..), wouldn't my sole interest still be the same?   

 

[jarland]

First, I don't KNOW you oversell unless you tell me?  Many providers claim not to oversell at all.

Second, If I was to use the full resources that I have purchased legitimately (website, whatever..), wouldn't my sole interest still be the same?   

Not at all. You purchased it to use for your needs, not specifically to attempt to cause harm (or I think you'd agree that you would be a candidate for termination upon admitting this). I think you may have gotten off track from the intention behind this thread in the beginning. The intention was to reserve disk allocation from a provider assumed to be overselling. So to get here we've already assumed the end user believes that overselling is taking place and intends to utilize that knowledge to cause harm. When we oversell we take a risk. That risk is nearly nonexistent as the idea that everyone could use what they purchase simply never becomes a reality. However, as hosts we must acknowledge that this is still a potential scenario. When it happens, we either admit that the entire population has changed in some dramatic way and that business plan must be phased out or absorbed by a new plan that accommodates for new realities, or we must take the impact and continue on assuming that overall the numbers still even out with a little bit of node migration. Attempting to force us into one of these scenarios is down right malicious. Doing so by legitimate use? That is the scenario we consider a possibility (though an improbability) and we must be prepared to simply do what is necessary to ensure that the clients continue to all be able to use what they purchased.

It's not like everyone would cap 100% in the same hour anyway, there's not enough pipeline for that, so we have time to observe and adjust.

 

[jcaleb]

I think it's not related to DDOS. You are intentionally hurting someone. In the case of this post, you are just using your resources inside your box.

I think it's not related to eat all you can buffet. because it's limited resource. If I bought 5 servings of food, I should be allowed to eat it right?

 

[jarland]

I think it's not related to DDOS. You are intentionally hurting someone. In the case of this post, you are just using your resources inside your box.


I think it's not related to eat all you can buffet. because it's limited resource. If I bought 5 servings of food, I should be allowed to eat it right?

Just like reserving disk space specifically to punish a provider for overselling is intentionally hurting someone. This thread assumes that you believe overselling is taking place and that you believe you have the right to force the provider to deal with an extremely improbable reality by forcing the improbable into reality in such a way that provides absolutely zero benefit to you or the host. I'll ask, what justification can you come up with for capping all of the resources for no actual usage when you already believe the provider is overselling? Give me one justification for this aside from a personal vendetta against a business plan that is proven effective and economical. Then tell me how that vendetta justifies your continued status as a client if the provider becomes aware, without question, of your intention.

 

[jcaleb]

First, you know the host oversells to keep prices low. You are part of the bargain.

this assumes that i read forums. but if i only read ads posts is another story

 

[jcaleb]

Just like reserving disk space specifically to punish a provider for overselling is intentionally hurting someone.

Overselling is a statistic game/gamble. Host should be ready that some people really wants to use resources they purchased.

 

[jarland]

Overselling is a statistic game/gamble. Host should be ready that some people really wants to use resources they purchased.

Exactly. But why would you need to artificially inflate your usage to reserve the resources if you don't know that I'm overselling? If you do know that I'm overselling, why would you need to artificially inflate your usage to reserve the resources if you think I'm actually worth hosting your content with?

 

[maounique]

I think there is another aspect here.

We allow all customers, even on overzold plans to go over their cpu quota for a short time or a small amount.

If everyone starts running unix benches on cron, this will make bursting impossible.

Also, running bogus ramdisks to fill the ram is making vswap impossible.

The company guarantees access to the resources when you need them. Reserving anything is unnecessary and harmful for all parties involved.

If you think you may boost sales for your KVMs or Xen by pesting OVZ that way, you are wrong, people will still go for the lowest plan that does the job.

In spite of instabilities, exploits and poor isolation, OVZ does the job at a good price. Not you, nor 100 hosts selling KVM/Xen will be able to change that.

We sell all three types (well, out of stock on KVM and OVZ right now, but in general) and ovz makes two thirds of the servers.

It is great for hosting, gameservers (most of them) and voip due to low latency and overhead as well as the generous resources available when you need them.

If you are only after wasting them in the purpose of increasing the prices and/or pushing the host out of business because you dont like their low prices and you think you cant sell your Xen/KVM otherwise, guess what, you are wrong.

If you cant sell Xen/KVM, you are doing something wrong, OVZ is not to be blamed, it caters for a different needs.

Frankly, all other virtualization types should concentrate on allowing overcommit much better so the servers will start to be used more than a few %. VMWare does that well, now KVM is improving visibly, Xen is lagging behind somewhat.

You will never be able to reach the flexibility and speed of OVZ, but that is normal by design because various virtualization types are intended for various usage scenarios, but i want to see a kvm server running at at least 50% cpu (and not due to io wait) for a change.

 

[jcaleb]

We allow all customers, even on overzold plans

you are with uncle?

 

[drmike]

But why would you need to artificially inflate your usage to reserve the resources if you don't know that I'm overselling?

 

Well,  I didn't inflate my usage in this scenario, except on disk.   No RAM, CPU or bandwidth use.  Purely disk.   Impossible for a provider to tell exactly what those file(s) are and any attempt to do such would rub me the wrong way / make me disinterested in their disregard for privacy.

I did say about a RAM drive to put some RAM to use too, which again, I see no giant problem with. I bought it, and am quarantined, where's the harm in using what I bought?

Face it, providers are just petrified of anything remotely like this or anything which causes subscribers/customers to use their resources.

Providers are banking on customers buying frivolously without any real usage or intent to use.  It's like selling crack to crackheads.  But in this model you sell some mythical resources and when it comes time to deliver the goods, start coughing, about having to deliver a product to a buyer.

I think, generally speaking for non dedicated servers --- shared servers - I am going to spend more time looking at on-demand computing models where you pay based on actual use for CPU + RAM + disk + bandwidth.   A $7/2GB VPS looks great on paper, until it sits there idle or with too many providers - you try using the resources.

The benefits I also see with on-demand computing is being able to burst as-needed and be billed accordingly.  Considering use patterns on growing number of VPSes in my collection, I'll probably save money.  Plus with on demand, I can get more CPU use, grow disk to terabytes if needed and do other things that VPSes just don't do yet.

I could envision perfectly legitimate use that would end up with the same disk consumption up front via FUSE with a custom/distributed/encrypted volume stored on the VPS.  Considering the sad a$$ state of privacy, government spying and hacker/provider culture, doing something crypto volumed seems to be a step toward self preservation.

 

[SeriesN]

This exactly what I am seeing right now and to be honest, it is rather interesting. I don't get this straight,

IF you are selling something, buyer should be able to use it/get what they are paying for. You don't go buy a gallon of milk and let the grocer give you half gallon for the same price just because he knows you won't be able to finish it and that milk will rot . As long as users getting what they are paying for without violating any terms and unless your term uses the same thing "unlimited" hosts use, I don't see any issue.

NOW! If you are going to deny that, and this is in response to someone who is quite vocal about USA laws and how EU laws are better, we have consumer protection against false advertising and you risk losing your license if you falsely promote something

 

[SeriesN]

At the end of the day, I am happy and proud to say that, my KVM and OpenVZ lineup has the same pricing structure  while my KVM nodes are ~ twice as expensive as my openVZ nodes. As an end user, you will decide what you want to use and if you prefer speed and simplicity over isolation. The only part I oversell are IO, CPU and PortSpeed and I am pretty much clear about CPU and Port speed usage. As long as your neighbors won't complain, cops won't knock at your door  

 

[jcaleb]

Every business weights the averages of given conditions. Cannot guess the price of said ingredient in a given month, so makes an average of it for the business plan. If is wrong, goes out of business, but if a competitor buys all the ingredient at a loss just to make the prices go up and the competitors fail, then that is forbidden anti-concurential tactic.

What does it have to do on my host business plan? I am just using resources I paid for. And it's host business to juggle users on different nodes if they are overselling.

Again, I am speaking as a customer. If you are not willing to handle people that want to use the resources they paid for, then why sell it in the first place?

I don't get it that I have to be mindful that the host is overselling when I use my VPS.

 

[jarland]

@buffalood

Well,  I didn't inflate my usage in this scenario, except on disk.   No RAM, CPU or bandwidth use.  Purely disk.   Impossible for a provider to tell exactly what those file(s) are and any attempt to do such would rub me the wrong way / make me disinterested in their disregard for privacy.

Unless someone is starting a campaign to do it on a forum and the provider happens to know from previous exchanges who it is that is doing this. It is by no means impossible. If every one of my users up and scales to 100% usage tomorrow, this isn't the result of a dice roll, this means something is happening and I need to start figuring out why all of my clients had an identical need on the same day. My first assumption is that there has been a massive security breach. All clients don't act alike, and every use of a VPS doesn't need to automatically scale to the point where it cannot even sustain usage. It's illogical to a very large degree.

I never even thought of being skeptical of people using their allotments until you posted a thread encouraging them to try to do it for malicious purposes. You've made a public call for people to start abusing their hosts. I'll be eyeing patterns. I don't have to spy. I can open a ticket and ask them. I'll know if they're lying without digging through their container. You can't pull one over on the guy watching IO, pps, CPU, netstat, and top process lists all day. When you fill 100GB of storage and you say it's backups but you've transferred 2MB, I'll know what's going on.

I did say about a RAM drive to put some RAM to use too, which again, I see no giant problem with. I bought it, and am quarantined, where's the harm in using what I bought?

No harm. Reserving it because you're afraid it won't be there when you need it? Inconsistent with the needs of the hosting industry. If you have no memory left, you cannot sustain growth. Web servers, mail servers, DNS servers, and most game servers need memory to burst into. All clients on the server are not going to need the same burst patterns. This is reality. You're talking about changing reality. For what? What host do you believe is worth your future use but at the same time you fear will not be able to provide you the resources later? Do you honestly expect me to believe that you would host content with someone that you trust so little? That doesn't make sense. It's illogical. Want to know what logic actually connects the dots and paints a solid picture? You have a personal vendetta against overselling and you want to encourage people to join together in changing a reality in which it works into a reality in which it does not. I consider you a friend, but I'm not sugar coating this. It's crystal clear and I'm calling you out on it.

Face it, providers are just petrified of anything remotely like this or anything which causes subscribers/customers to use their resources.

Petrified of a bunch of people joining together with intent only on changing a business plan that works because you don't like it? No I'm not petrified of it. It's not like I haven't terminated abusive clients in the past. Not for this, but there's a first time for everything.

Providers are banking on customers buying frivolously without any real usage or intent to use.  It's like selling crack to crackheads.  But in this model you sell some mythical resources and when it comes time to deliver the goods, start coughing, about having to deliver a product to a buyer.

Try again. Responsibly is the word you were looking for. It is not frivolous to have unused memory. It is downright necessary for almost every possible use of a VPS. The small minority that can come up with a good reason for using 100% of it will have no issue with me. That's great that they found a need. The ones just trying to stir things up and cause problems for me? They'll be asked to take their money elsewhere.

I think, generally speaking for non dedicated servers --- shared servers - I am going to spend more time looking at on-demand computing models where you pay based on actual use for CPU + RAM + disk + bandwidth.   A $7/2GB VPS looks great on paper, until it sits there idle or with too many providers - you try using the resources.

Ask any of my clients if they've had a problem using 2GB of memory on my nodes. Memory is cheap. An E5 node can hold more clients than would be advisable to load with vSwap enabled. Thus, high memory packages at a promo price is hardly a big deal. So you know what ChicagoVPS loaded. Now every provider is horrible and must pay?

I could envision perfectly legitimate use that would end up with the same disk consumption up front via FUSE with a custom/distributed/encrypted volume stored on the VPS.  Considering the sad a$$ state of privacy, government spying and hacker/provider culture, doing something crypto volumed seems to be a step toward self preservation.

Certainly I would love to see someone put their resources to use for a legitimate reason. 

This exactly what I am seeing right now and to be honest, it is rather interesting. I don't get this straight,

IF you are selling something, buyer should be able to use it/get what they are paying for. You don't go buy a gallon of milk and let the grocer give you half gallon for the same price just because he knows you won't be able to finish it and that milk will rot . As long as users getting what they are paying for without violating any terms and unless your term uses the same thing "unlimited" hosts use, I don't see any issue.

NOW! If you are going to deny that, and this is in response to someone who is quite vocal about USA laws and how EU laws are better, we have consumer protection against false advertising and you risk losing your license if you falsely promote something

Would you tell me who is suggesting that a client not be able to use it? You're not the first to step in here and say that providers are freaking out and saying that clients shouldn't be able to use what they pay for. Considering I'm one of very few even weighing in, I'll assume you're talking to me and Mao. I'd love for you to show me where either of us suggested such a thing. What we said, for the millionth time (and I'll defend it a million more, you know me), is that purposely trying to cause issues with a node is malicious in nature and should be met with a termination notice. If you believe that your provider is overselling with a business plan that proven effective when done responsibly and you try to prevent them from continuing to do so for absolutely no benefit of any party involved, you are showing malicious intent.

At the end of the day, I am happy and proud to say that, my KVM and OpenVZ lineup has the same pricing structure  while my KVM nodes are ~ twice as expensive as my openVZ nodes. As an end user, you will decide what you want to use and if you prefer speed and simplicity over isolation. The only part I oversell are IO, CPU and PortSpeed and I am pretty much clear about CPU and Port speed usage. As long as your neighbors won't complain, cops won't knock at your door

That's all well and fine and I love that about you. But don't come in here and crap on others for doing something that works, over and over again. If my overselling memory is a problem, it's my problem. Show me a client who hits an issue with it and I'll make it rain so hard they'll feel like Michelle Obama with a Visa card. But show me a client who wants to make it a problem just because they can and I'll show you a client who needs a boot removed from their rear end.

What does it have to do on my host business plan? I am just using resources I paid for. And it's host business to juggle users on different nodes if they are overselling.

Again, I am speaking as a customer. If you are not willing to handle people that want to use the resources they paid for, then why sell it in the first place?

I don't get it that I have to be mindful that the host is overselling when I use my VPS.

This thread was made to encourage people to put an end to overselling by forcing providers into submission on that particular point you just mentioned. Yes you should be able to use it. No you should not try to encourage people to break a viable model just because you can, and no a host shouldn't have to bend over and take it if they see as plain as day that not a gigabyte has been transferred and suddenly 60 people all need 100GB of storage space in the same week.

------------------------

On another note, let me provide the overseller mission statement that I just wrote for fun.

Overcommitting works. Does every customer have a checkout line? If you staff the store appropriately (and most do not) then you will understand that not everyone in the store will check out at the same time. They do not all need a register at the same time. You allot for realistic patterns, not over simplified child-like observations like "there's 50 customers in the store, the sign on the door says no wait to checkout, there absolutely has to be 50 registers or it's false advertising." Real life demands effective, productive, and efficient models. If you don't trust the guy monitoring the patterns and doing the math to determine how to meet the goal on the sign then don't go to that store. If you do trust him, don't encourage 51 people to go in and all check out at the same time just so you can say "ha, you broke your promise."

 

Overcommitting works. Does every car have a lane? Does efficient traffic planning involve adding a lane for every car? Did you not pay to drive on that road with your tax dollars? Are you entitled to park your car in the road because you paid for it and it should be able to sustain your needs?

 

Overcommitting works. Do you encourage all of your neighbors to max out their cable internet speed in order to create justification for a claim of false advertising against your ISP?

 

Overcommitting works. Can you host a reliable service without memory to burst into? Your website, game server, VIOP, whatever, needs extra memory to handle actual usage on top of it's standard idle configuration.

 

Thank you and good day.

 

[drmike]

First, I am just loving this thread.  A lot of this is theory vs. reality and expectations of the buyer vs. fluff of the seller.

Thanks @jarland and obviously none of this is about Catalyst.  If we could get you to school folks some the market wouldn't be how it is.

Now every provider is horrible and must pay?

Nope. Specified up front horrible providers and mainly those where the client has been ToS screwed into rest of prepaid contract with non refund after spectacular failure(s).

We have some good provider folks who prefer idle servers and balance their workloads across many clients and it works.  So the issue kind of stings/seems foreign / lack of need to do this to a provider   Clearly, as proposed is a means of flushing out the horribly oversold providers who cannot and will not manage their servers and likely has many more problems.

You have a personal vendetta against overselling and you want to encourage people to join together in changing a reality in which it works into a reality in which it does not. I consider you a friend, but I'm not sugar coating this. It's crystal clear and I'm calling you out on it.

 

Right on, I take overselling personally.   I don't care who the company is doing it.  If they are, their name is mud and should be smeared.

People joining together?  Not really.  If I intended that I would have started Occupy VPS and we could hang out and shoot the breeze and protest outside colo facilities while not bathing and doing lots of intoxicating substances.

It's a tutorial on how to spin up some reserved space for later use, mainly where the provider is a problem and the customer is being screwed.

I don't expect 100% utilization of resources.  I never proposed that.  80% is where I put things.  A full 20% under plan cap.

Now in all fairness, I long ago put crypto'd volumes on remote VPSes.   Was part of my normal setup.  So I've been allocating disk blocks (then 10GB+ single files) for a while selectively (where working on crypto related matters and right resouces --- disk, IO, location, reliability, etc.)  Same appearance and net outcome per se.

Does every customer have a checkout line?

See, but a customer isn't buying a checkout line.  They are buying a box of cookies and there better be cookies in there and they better be fresh and it better be about the amount there should be.

Just last week, I had a guy behind me in line with a full cart of non perishables.   Me, I had well a few hundred items to cash out.  The fellow got tired of waiting and left the store.  Why?  Because the store hadn't staffed a second register.  One register in the place.

Overcommitting works. Do you encourage all of your neighbors to max out their cable internet speed in order to create justification for a claim of false advertising against your ISP?

My ISP can't deliver what they sell at 5AM on a Monday morning.  Then again, they can't route traffic right either.  Plus they are QoS happy.  Never mind they keep upping the price of their non competitive service (nice to have a monopoly).

Sure is false advertising.  Especially where they fail to upgrade nodes and invest in more fiber to deal with the growing pig pile of video everyone streams all their waking hours.  ISPs are sort of the granddaddy of overselling and underdelivering while promising all sorts of fast and wonderful.

Can you host a reliable service without memory to burst into? Your website, game server, VIOP, whatever, needs extra memory to handle actual usage on top of it's standard idle configuration.

Burst memory?  Containers come with x RAM + whatever burst/swap.   I never advocated reaching or exceeding the limits, just utilizing a portion of what was provisioned.   It is entirely possible to run things without hitting ceilings and stay within the boundaries.  I've run no-swap environments for years and have ample headroom still.  

 

[vanarp]

Just checking.. Has any provider observed clients applying the suggested technique to reserve disk or memory since the surfacing of this thread?

 

[kaniini]

Overcommitting works. Do you encourage all of your neighbors to max out their cable internet speed in order to create justification for a claim of false advertising against your ISP?

That sounds like something I would do, yes.